Opportunity City: CCHS senior says B.C., state 'pretty bad'

She says too many people give up

Nov. 21, 2012

Morgan Bailey, a 16-year-old senior at Calhoun Community High School, poses Nov. 8 at her school. With a child of her own now, Bailey said she's ready to leave Battle Creek. / Justin A. Hinkley/The Enquirer

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Opportunity city

An important part of Battle Creek’s economic health is for the city to develop a pipeline of educated, skilled youth willing to invest in this community and fill positions as older workers retire. This series looks at what the city is doing to develop that pipeline, the kinds of opportunities available for young people, and how our youth view their hometown. The series

Sunday: A look at what Battle Creek has to offer its youth, compared to other cities, and what city leaders are doing to improve those statistics. And, the city through their eyes:Monday: Sean Martinez, a St. Philip Catholic Central High School graduate and senior at Central Michigan University. Tuesday: Lauren Martin, a senior at Lakeview High School. Wednesday: Bill Vann, a Lakeview High School graduate and senior at Michigan State University. Today: Morgan Bailey, a senior at Calhoun Community High School.

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Morgan Bailey said she’s ready to leave Battle Creek. She said she’ll miss her family, but she has a family of her own to support, now.

The 16-year-old Calhoun Community High School senior has seen opportunity here. Her grandmother owns an accounting business, and Bailey has worked there. That experience is what made her want to go to business school. Bailey said she doesn’t know if she wants to be an accountant, but she wants to do something in business.

But over the years she’s grown up here, Bailey said she’s seen the city in decline. As entertainment venues and other places have closed shop — “I feel like a lot of things got taken away,” she said — violence increased, the teen believes.

And roughly five months ago, when she gave birth to her son, Venito Jamison Jr., Bailey said she wasn’t sure the Cereal City was the kind of place she wanted to raise him.

Growing up, Bailey saw this city from many vantage points. She started school in Gull Lake Community Schools, then she went to Springfield Middle School and Battle Creek Central High School. Then she transferred to Lakeview High School before transferring to CCHS, a public charter alternative high school.

She’s worked hard and skipped a grade so she can graduate early.

Thinking of her son, Bailey said, “I don’t know what school I’d send him to to fit in. I don’t want him to be raised in a place with violence.”

Her boyfriend, Venito’s father, “never knew what he wanted to be,” Bailey said, and when she got pregnant, “he thought the Navy was a good way to support a family.”

In March, her boyfriend will go to boot camp. They’ll marry sometime in the spring, and then she’ll join him wherever he’s stationed.

In Battle Creek, “You have to really work to get something here,” she said. “Things just aren’t offered to you. Michigan, right now, it’s pretty bad.”

Bailey said she thinks the city can turn around, “but I think people need to step up. A lot of people, they don’t try to make anything better. They just give up.”

Still, if the Navy didn’t work out, Bailey said she would move back to Battle Creek. But she said she’d only return “if I could make sure I had a career to go to every day.”

Though she’s leaving it, Bailey said she’s optimistic about her hometown.

“There have been good things here before, and there can be again,” she said. “It’s not all bad.”